Tensions between Israel and the UN escalate

SOMINI SENGUPTA

In the midst of Israel's battle with militants in Gaza during the past three weeks, skirmishes opened on a second front in recent days. Its strikes on United Nations facilities and the steep civilian casualties brought a barrage of rebukes and warnings from senior UN officials, reaching a fever pitch just before the announcement of a cease-fire on Friday.

Behind the scenes, diplomats were on the phone incessantly with Israelis, Palestinians and representatives of countries in the region that have influence over Israel's principal nemesis, Hamas. It led to a 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire that the secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, announced through his spokesman.

A Palestinian man inspects the damage to his home in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo: AFP

In public, the war of words intensified this week, with the United Nations blaming Israel for an attack that killed at least 19 people who were taking refuge at a UN school and Israel, in turn, accusing the world body for helping Hamas.

The United Nations has been dragged into the conflict: eight of its staff members have been killed in the past 24 days, and more than 100 of its facilities have come under fire, including the school. UN officials said they had repeatedly told Israel of its exact location.

Childhood lost: a displaced Palestinian boy looks out from a makeshift tent at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Photo: Mahmud Hams

The deputy secretary-general, Jan Eliasson, a former Swedish diplomat, was riled when he reminded Israel of the Geneva Conventions, which established international law governing warfare. In Geneva, the UN's top human rights official, Navi Pillay, raised the prospect of war crimes.

Christopher Gunness, the UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman in Gaza, broke down at the end of an interview with Al-Jazeera, which promptly went viral. And Pierre Krahenbuhl, the commissioner general of UNRWA, the agency responsible for aiding Palestinians, told the Security Council that military operations had been "waged with excessive - and at times disproportionate - force in densely populated urban settings."

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Israel has rarely regarded the UN as a reliable ally. But the tensions are so acute now that the two are divided even over who has died. The UN maintains that 75 per cent to 80 per cent of the dead are civilians. Israel rebuts that assertion. Its ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, said as recently as last week that his government had established that about half the dead were combatants.

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He mocked UN officials who rue the Israeli blockade of Gaza, pointing out that Hamas was using cement to build "terror tunnels" with construction materials. He has repeatedly taken UN officials to task for the discovery of rockets at its schools. Mr Prosor also chided the body's humanitarian relief co-ordinator, Valerie Amos, for acknowledging that Israel had faced rocket fire but declining to blame Hamas for it.

"I had problems hearing 'Hamas'," he said. "I had problems hearing 'Hamas' in any briefings from the secretary-general downward." He said the "international community" had been one-sided in favour of Israel's enemies.

"I feel the international community should be very vocal in standing with Israel fighting terrorism today, because if not you will see it on your doorstep tomorrow," Mr Prosor said.

On the issue of rockets, UN officials have taken pains to say that they had been found in buildings they had abandoned for safety and that it was their staff who had found the weapons and condemned those who stashed them on UN premises, which is illegal under international law.

As for the death toll, the UN said it collected figures from the Gaza health ministry along with its own staff. Mr Krahenbuhl said his own visits to Gaza hospitals this week had convinced him that the vast majority of the dead were civilians: more than 250 of the estimated 1400 Palestinian dead have been children. He invited sceptics to tour Gaza's hospitals with him.

In addition to his eight colleagues killed in Gaza in the past three weeks, Mr Krahenbuhl said the agency had also lost 12 colleagues in Syria in that country's three-year war.

In such a profoundly polarised part of the world, he said, it was difficult to be "seen as even-handed".

It did not start out this way.

When Israel's military incursion in Gaza began, Mr Ban made statements condemning Hamas rockets, urging Israel to halt its bombings, and calling on both sides to address what he repeatedly called the "root causes" of their enmity. Even after the bombing of a UN school last week, while Mr Ban was in the region, the United Nations refrained from casting blame.

And even now, its officials are careful to call on Israel and Hamas to comply with international laws and, as Mr Krahenbuhl put it, "to respect the sanctity of UN premises."

Regardless of the verbal volleys, there is little that UN officials can do without instructions from the Security Council. The Council met on Thursday for more than three hours behind closed doors but failed to reach consensus on a proposed statement that would have condemned attacks on UN installations. Diplomats said they were stuck on language that would have also condemned the use of its facilities to store rockets.